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Monday, March 9, 2009

The Passion of Geeks

In case you misread that: not Greeks, GEEKS. And, yes, I'm being serious.

The stereotype is, of course, the greasy-haired square in horn-rimmed glasses with tape over the nose piece. Or, a more modern version, the kind you might actually run into, as I did this weekend, at a science fiction convention, of an overweight guy wearing a tee-shirt with an obscure computer reference and a tendency to stand just a little too close.

I love him.

Those are my people. I actually can't always stand to watch "Big Bang Theory" because feel like they're mocking me and my friends. I know people WAY too much like those guys. WAY too much. They're not caricatures to me. They're my friends.

Anyway, the point is, what I really, really love about the geek is his passion. No one cares quite like a geek. What he cares about is... fiction. It might be movies, TV, comic books, but it's also novels. It isn't always easy in the "real world" (tm) to find a collection of people you can talk to about your book (the one you just read or the one you just wrote), but at a science fiction convention not only have six people read it, but they have something THEY want to say about it too. Books are something they really care about. To the point of fist fights.

Oh, you think I'm joking?

Hardly.

I was on a panel at MarsCON this weekend called "The Day Star Wars Died for Me," and the moderator actually had to step in between one of the panelist and me, because he was honestly afraid we were going to come to blows.

You know, I always think there's a great deal of fondness in The Big Bang Theory. I don't think it's making fun of geeks so much as celebrating them. The tagline for that show is "Smart is the new sexy." And I agree.